UWindsor BFA graduates take their Victory Lap at LeBel
By Paul Breschuk
Lance Writer
December 10, 2008
 Victory Lap, a BFA graduate show at the LeBel Gallery, offers a taste of everything: paintings, sculpture, print making, photography, art installation, and quilting.
Dan Bernyk’s “90 P.S.I. Compounded” scatters groups of welded sheet steel across the gallery floor. They appear organic, twisting, almost flower-like. Aside from their random curvatures, there is a uniformity in the objects’ basic design that likens them to four leaf clovers. They are certainly as playful as clovers, some fitting within each other to create curious-looking stacks. This playfulness is also created through design. As alluded to in the title, the shapes were inflated by the injection of air leaving an exaggerated, puffy roundness. Soft and shiny, the surfaces look as delicate as silk. In fact, one feels an impulsive urge to touch them, to verify that they’ve been looking at steel.
“Michigan Ave.,” by Kevin Ouellette, was inspired by a particular winter scene. Chalk and Conté on paper, it’s a recounting of an ice floe he witnessed while walking the Michigan Avenue Bridge in Chicago, IL. The passing shapes, in their calm endless procession, is known to have trance-inducing effects. This state of bliss is well translated into Ouellette’s work, with streaks of colour (the reflection of city lights) dancing across the ice.
Priscilla O’Connor presents the photographic work, “Skin,” as a grid of 12 images. Each image presents a close-up of the subject’s naked body at different angles and locations. At times, the eye becomes lost without perspective or the help of familiar bodily landmarks. At times, the viewer may even think they’ve stumbled across something risqué. A straightforward identification, aside from hands and fingers, is difficult to come by. Thus, much time is spent before the photographs as the viewer is pulled into their warmth and intimacy.
“Human Cage,” Ashley Smith’s art installation, features a human-sized pet cage that also resembles a prison cell. Amenities include a treadmill, feed bowl, water dispenser, portable toilet (really just a fancy bucket), sleep mat, thin blanket, and a dirty pillow without its cover. The cage is open, allowing viewers to temporarily experience the pitiful existence offered by the human cage.
Smith’s focus is clearly situated on animal rights. More specifically, she is concerned with the ethics regarding pet ownership, as her two other submissions indicate. “Starter Cages” presents two cages (pet-sized) that appear to have gone through a fire. They are both charred and ominously empty. Only by looking at the corresponding photographs, on the opposite wall, can the viewer piece together the grizzly story.
The final artist rounding out Victory Lap is Sarah Haveman. Each of her four submissions offers crisp and distinguished ideas.
Easily the most striking piece of the exhibition, “Self Portrait,” acrylics on wood, stands out with vibrant colours and excellent contrasts of light and darkness. It is a provocative depiction of the artist: head tilted back, hand reaching behind to ruffle hair in completing a glamorous and seductive pose. Aside from the interesting angles, Haveman has also added subtle dripping lines, quietly bleeding emotion from the face.
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